“I AM NOT A RACIST!”
The Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan
Donald Trump
Bill Clinton
Malcolm X
(and practically everyone who has ever been accused of racism)
This post is hard for me. Here’s why.
I’m not that kind of blogger. I’m not an activist. I write about culture and raising kids abroad and what happens when you accidentally tell someone that their hindquarters are fragrant and delectable. I’m THAT guy. I have purposely and skillfully avoided the hard issues NOT because I don’t think they are important.
I steer clear because I have never considered my contribution valuable. I have opinions like EVERYONE ELSE in the world but bringing them into this conversation would be like bringing a squirt gun to a firestorm.
My labels don’t exactly lend credibility either. “Hey everybody! Pipe down, we’ve got a white, American, straight, Christian, male who has something to say about racism!”
“Gee. Great. We haven’t heard from one of those guys yet.”
But there is something rich that happens when you step away from your “home” culture and see yourself (and the world that you grew up in) through a different set of lenses. Am I right?
It’s challenging but it is good.
It hurts but it helps.
It’s alarming . . . but sometimes . . . it’s transformational.
With all of that said I think I have something to say about racists.
Ready?
I might be one — but I can’t tell. Here’s why.
The word “racist” ONLY seems to show up in two forms. As an ACCUSATION — or a DENIAL. It’s never a discovery. Never a realization. Never a confession. There is zero room for nuance. Zero range. Zero spectrum.
You either are or you’re not.
It’s used exclusively in the second and third person (positively) — “YOU ARE A RACIST AND THEY ARE TOO!!”
OR
in the first person (negatively).
“I AM NOT!!”
(take 2 minutes and 52 seconds to watch this video)
The two-sided approach produces radically different definitions.
The ACCUSER says, “Have you EVER used a term, said a word, thought a thought or acted in a way that could be considered racist? Then you must be one.”
Justin Bieber said the n-word when he was 14.
Paula Deen said it before Justin Bieber was even born.
The DENIER says, “Is any part of my life NOT racist? Then boom! I am NOT one.”
“I have Asian friends.”
“I voted for a black man.”
“I’m not as bad as that guy.”
So by the ACCUSER’S definition — are YOU a racist?
I am (and I cried a little bit when I wrote that).
BUT as the ACCUSED I am SO quick to DENY, DENY, DENY.
My daughter is Asian.
My son is black.
Look at this picture.
How could I possibly be racist?
See how that works?
I’d love to have a different conversation. Here’s why.
“Racism” is a powerful and important word. The conversations that surround it are also important . . . in ALL of their different forms.
The venomous political debates need to happen.
The marches have changed things.
The ACCUSATIONS and the DENIALS make total sense.
AND THERE IS MORE . . . There is another side to the conversation that typically gets reduced to ashes in the firestorm.
It’s a conversation where I look at ME and not YOU.
I ask MYSELF hard questions instead of responding poorly to yours.
I come face to face with my own mess and I own it, even if I hate it.
I move forward to something better instead of being chained to my broken past.
It doesn’t start with “I AM A RACIST.” We don’t even agree on what that means. But . . .
It might go something like this.
I grew up around people who shared my labels. In my home, I was taught to love people both by instruction and example. Growing up though (although never in my family) I heard racial slurs and hateful, horrible stereotypes that formed my own prejudice. I heard banter that celebrated the misfortune of other races.
I heard “Polack jokes” before I knew that Poland was a country. I heard the term “Jewing them down” from the same people who taught me about the Jewish people in Sunday School. I heard terms like “Spick” and “Gook” and “Raghead” and “Chink” and had to ask each time which ethnicity we were talking about because I had never met any of them in real life. I listened to joke after joke that mocked the physical features, the language, the eating habits, the poverty and the crime rate of the African descended people who lived on the other side of town.
And I laughed.
I laughed because I valued the approval of people who were like me more than I valued the actual people who weren’t.
I’m sorry.
I regret all of that and it breaks me to think about it. I wish that it were not a part of my story but there is no way to untell it. Ignoring it has never made it go away.
I have grown since then. I have changed dramatically — but even now I continue to discover pieces that are packed tightly and deeply in my core that I never knew were there. Layer after layer of entitlement continue to be peeled away.
I still struggle to recognize and acknowledge the humanity of the humans around me.
But I am ready to have that conversation.
What about you?
“I laughed because I valued the approval of people who were like me more than I valued the actual people who weren’t.” This line is important to say out loud. For me, it’s important to read, too.
I love you, man. I think your thoughts here are the start of something good. Keep digging in to the hard topics.
Yes, the conversation needs to be had.
However, there are two radically different starting points: If one believes that we all evolved from nothing, then we live in a survival of the fittest world. And as deplorable as it is, racism is just one facet of that world. Everyone puts everyone down in order to survive, to get ahead. If one believes that we were created by God, then each individual life, totally apart from skin, language, culture, geographical location, job status, etc., takes on a worth of unfathomable dimensions. In such a world, none of the putdown isms have their place.
How will the conversation go? I don’t know…t’will depend on the world view of those having it, which puts the struggle (for struggle it is) right in my heart. I can’t change others, but I can work on me.
That’s an interesting perspective Melanie. Indeed, if we are created by God then the next progression is that we are also here to continue Jesus’ work – to be his hands. But I would question the ‘fait accompli’ that isms are part of that status quo. Surely if we are continuing in Jesus’ name, then it’s about loving one another. And in loving one another, there’s no space for racism.
Melanie, please correct me if I’m wrong, but are you saying that the only people who aren’t racist (or do racist things) are Christians? It seems like you said that anyone who believes in evolution just accepts racism as part of the world which seems demonstrably false.
Matt, thanks for your comment. I’m actually saying that Christians ought to know and behave better. Unfortunately, they don’t always.
Which brings me back to my last sentences: the struggle begins with me. I must work on me.
Wow! Thank you.
“It’s a conversation where I look at ME and not YOU.” < This is what we need more of. Thank you for showing up in this important conversation.
I love that you said we can’t even agree on what “I am a racist” even means. For me, it has long been a struggle to work through, as my father is black and my mother is white. Being mixed, I have carried around a story that my opinion doesn’t matter, or that I’m not black enough to know what it’s like to be the victim of racism in America, or that I’m not white enough to pretend it doesn’t impact my family. Introduce the label of “white passing” (as a very light skinned mixed girl with no physical traits that identify me as any one race) and it gets even messier. I think it’s important to me that I deeply examine my own childhood and upbringing, and then marry into that my experiences from living and traveling abroad. It’s easy to focus (as an American) on the systemic issues that racism causes here in the States, but this is a conversation that crosses all borders.
Desiree Adaway says that racism is prejudice connected with power. I’ve been sitting with that for quite awhile, as I do know that I have biases and prejudice towards others, but to take it one step further and examine what that means is tough. This is work that needs to be done, one person and one conversation at a time. Thanks Jerry for starting the dialogue.
Those of us who grew in the southern US have grown up with racism as you did. My high school class was the first to be integrated in our town, with just five very brave African American girls (yes, I’m that old). And it goes on. The Sunday School teacher at our former church said that we wouldn’t have street people today if we still had slavery. My good friend just yesterday used the word “chink” referring to someone who had made her beautiful blinds. A neighbor complained to me that there must be something in our housing association rules that excluded “blacks”. Another neighbor called the police to complain about the “Muslims” that had rented a vacation home down the street. It turns out they were Indians wearing salwar kameez. .Sometimes I speak up, as I did in S.S., but at the least I wince.
Yet having lived cross-culturally, I understand why some prefer to live with others like them in their neighborhoods and attend churches with their style of music and preaching. The important thing is that they are free and equal, and we welcome anyone to our church. And yes, we have several nationalities in our small town church.
Yet I must ask myself about hidden biases as well. We all have them. I will be looking at myself more carefully after this. One hard aspect of this is that cultures often have certain traits that characterize many of their people. Americans are seen overseas as loud and brash. Yet not all of us are. And that is part of where it gets sticky. If all the people from one culture exhibit a certain trait, it’s only natural to expect that of others. The key is looking at each person as an individual who may or may not exhibit those characteristics. They are made in God’s image, and they are still unique individuals. May God help us “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
In “Whistling in the Dark”, Frederick Buechner wrote, “The Little Rock schools were desegregated in the end anyhow by a combination of legal process and armed force, but it was done without some gesture of courtesy, contrition, or compassion that might have captured the imagination of the world.”
It seems any part in progressing from where we are to who we must become must include “courtesy, contrition and compassion.” May these attributes be seen first in my own life before I demand them from others.
I am a racist. There I have said it but it is not the first time I have said that of myself. I am also a chauvinistic in many ways. In recognising those tendencies I work hard so that they are not reflected in my behaviour. I fail often.
My mother was from Georgia. One of her earliest memories was riding the wagon into town and seeing the body of a black man who had been lynched and left hanging.
I lived in the suburbs and most of the people looked like me. The first day of school I got sent to the principal’s office because I was fascinated by the hair of a black student standing in line in front of me. It seems that I liked the different feel and didn’t keep my hands to myself.
In high school I was a radical. I read Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver. Despite my radical credentials I recognised then that I was a racist. I set up the following scenario –
If there were two men, strangers to me, equally dressed with the only difference being that one was white and one was black, who would I approach to ask a question? My honest answer would be that I would ask the white man and not the black man.
Between high school and university I worked manual labour for three years. I was a longshoreman and a large part of my work was unloading banana ships. For historical reasons the union which unloaded banana ships was mainly black. I joined that union. Most days I was the only white person working in the hold of a ship. I was from the suburbs and many of them were from the inner city. Strangely we became friends. I told some of my closest friends there that I was a racist and, even though I explained why, they still advised me not to say it too loudly. A new guy, one day, decided he didn’t like me so he pulled a knife and threatened to kill me. I told my friends and he never showed up for work again. I decided not to ask about what had happened.
In the last 18 years, even though I have not lived in Africa, I have made many trips to various countries there. The equivalent time probably adds up to at least one year, probably more. I was often the only person from my ethnic group and/or the only person from my linguistic group and/or the only person who did not speak the language being used by everyone else. Looking at myself and being honest with myself I still have to say that deep down at my core I am still a racist. With that knowledge I try to monitor my behaviour so that being a racist does not show up in my actions and my comments. I am not always successful.
prpttccnsltnt…Your comment is the most honest I’ve seen from anyone on this topic and will say that I’m also a ‘racist’. All people are racists in the sense that we notice the differences of others from ourselves or have certain cultural expectations from specific racial groups. Somehow racism is framed as an American defect…it’s not. Walk the streets of just about any city in China, especially the small ones, and you will hear people saying, “Look at the laowai.” Racism is a universal human trait. If it’s connected to power as Naomi notes then it’s truly evil. Jesse Jackson famously said he’s relieved when he hears footsteps behind him on a dark street and turns to see it’s white guys and not black guys. Is his response racist or a cultural expectation?
Is it ok to be racist? No. Like you, when I feel it rising, I suppress it which is no different than the response you have to any other sin that tries to gain control. Treat each person as an individual and go from there.
Good conversation to have. I can feel some thinking coming on.
“But there is something rich that happens when you step away from your “home” culture and see yourself (and the world that you grew up in) through a different set of lenses. Am I right?”
Very Powerful writing. Thank you.